


Unattainable

by thepizzaman



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bonding, Fluff and Angst, Galra ruining everythingn, Injury Recovery, M/M, Memory Loss, Minor Violence, Post-Episode 11, Rescue Missions, Stranded, Temporary Character Death, Trans Character, Trans Lance (Voltron), following the end of episode 11
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-08-22 22:55:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8304398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepizzaman/pseuds/thepizzaman
Summary: “Lance, is that you?” his voice cracked like a dead leaf getting crushed under foot, fading into a terrified whisper at the sight of the stranger, who had hints of his lost friend staining his features, standing over him; his face hardened from years of waiting.“Who the hell is Lance?"





	1. Sand

**Author's Note:**

> this ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated

Keith came to once again on the third day spent drifting through space. He fell

asleep in the pilot’s seat just as he did every time the drowsiness became too aggressive to ignore. Red was grazing amongst strange stars absently, searching for something just beyond their radar.

 

But there was nothing, not the threat of Galra nor the slightest familiarity throughout the unending fields of stars. There was just empty space following empty space and the ruins of asteroids floating just as aimlessly as the two lost heroes.

 

The cabin rumbled gently, startling its pilot into consciousness from the already light slumber. The controls in front of him where steady and didn’t blare any cause for concern, nor did Red murmur anything to him through their unexplainable bond; all was, as it usually was, deadly calm.

 

Keith made a silent prayer to any and every god who might actually be out there watching them that they might come upon something or someone. He had come into the habit of doing this every time he woke, loosing track of morning or night, munching on tiny scraps of food goo or disgusting energy packets, he prayed and hoped but nothing ever came.

 

Nothing, until today. For all the small things he had learned to appreciate in his minimalistic life Keith never would have thought that a tiny blinking red light would bring him so much joy. But it did.

 

Almost unnoticeable to even the trained eye, a tiny blip came up on Red’s screen. It was flashing faintly and signaled an end to his search.

 

Lance’s weak signal was like a lighthouse after a long journey for land.

 

Keith scrambled to pull his dirtied helmet over his head, clicking the otherwise cursedly silent coms on and waiting, calling out for his lost friend.

 

Static came through. Not static as if there was something interrupting what might have been a joyous reunion of teammates, but static like the longed for connection was on and transmitting, but no one was on the other end to receive him.

 

Panic rose in Keith’s gut like all the space food he’d been eating for the past month was finally coming to kick him in the ass. He began to yell for whoever was on the other side, be it friend or foe or stranger Keith didn’t care; all he wanted was to hear another voice other than his own monologue to keep him sane.

 

“Red, we have to go down there.” Keith hissed, throwing his helmet so harshly to the ground it almost cracked.

 

The lion gave a quickly dismissed grumble of caution, and triangulated Lance’s location about seven hours away. He was on a planet Red brought up on the viewing screen that was painfully similar to earth, with water, green and desert coating it’s delicately clouded surface. Keith laughed out loud, a pathetic exhalation of air in a giggle that was borderline manic.

 

Without a second thought he brought up the panel and his chair swung forward, pulling him into the battle position he found now that he missed just as badly as he did his team. With a single thrust he jolted his giant robot into flight, taking them from the half power float they had been maintaining for the past several days into a full blast through space. Completely uninterrupted they blazed through the void, dodging rocks as they bounced around and out of the asteroid field, bursting into the unknown open with a shout.

 

It felt good to be in motion again, at the least. And Keith, in his urgent speeding, was running through scenario over scenario of his and Lance’s reuniting. Everything from finding Lance lounging delicately on some beach, well stocked and relaxed, to seeing his friend (yes, friend) after what felt like years, colliding and weeping for each other absences.

 

Neither of these was more likely than the other. It had only been about a week since they got separated. More than anything he expected to find a slightly tuckered out blue paladin searching just as desperately as Keith was, or stranded on this planet with his lion out of commission. Or maybe, maybe Lance was the one down and out. Maybe he landed here in a panic, desperate to get away from an unseen enemy. Hurt, perhaps, in the fray when they had been separated. Marooned, without his lion? Captured, injured, defeated.

_No, no, no_. Keith had to physically shake himself to stop these intrusive thoughts from slithering their way into the quickly forming cracks in his newly found hope.

 

Seven impossibly long hours rang with this constant internal battle between hoping the best and fearing the worst. When the planet came finally into view, a distant sphere, Red unexpectedly began to scream at her paladin through their bond like a fire alarm going off.

 

The Lion took it’s own initiative, barely avoiding the outer atmosphere and magnetic pull of the planet in a jolting loop, going into easy orbit.

 

“What, why the hell did you do that? Lance is down there!” Keith screamed, his voice cracking with anger.

 

The Lion’s indescribable otherworldly voice reverberated throughout Keith’s skull, repeating the same warning of threat and uneasy fear that pierced even this machine of war.

 

“We have to risk it.” Keith said, more to himself, “What if he’s down there and he’s hurt? I’m sorry, but we have to take the risk.” And with that he took the controls and threw them down towards the surface.

 

Almost immediately did the head of the lion begin to rattle aggressively; Red was unresponsive to Keith’s shouts, the cabin lights flickered and the controls wavered. A harsh tugging sensation started to climb into the throttle and it’s handlers chest, causing both to cringe and falter.

 

The lion was no longer flying but falling towards the alien planet’s surface. The rolling hills of desert came closer and closer to the Lion’s nosedive, scaring Keith’s heart out of his chest. Everything narrowed down to the one patch of sand that seamed to have made itself their grave and suddenly it all went black.

 

\--

 

It was a strange sensation to Keith to wake with such grogginess buzzing around him like anxious flies. A harsh beat pounded at the back of his head and blurred his vision with every thrum following his throbbing heartbeat. Something tickled the bushy fur of his eyebrow, trickling down from a gash that ached on his forehead. Nothing was in its right place.

 

Keith was sprawled out against the dash of his lion, one control handle stabbing his gut. He lifted himself off the panel; broken glass fell off his back and crunched under his hands. Everything was titled, causing Keith to have to stand to push himself into what would have been a sitting position.

 

Struggling to climb out of the darkened cockpit he reached for Red with his mind and was met with unsettling silence. He even tried calling out to her verbally, his voice so hoarse it frightened him into silence.

 

Lifting himself up off the panel was a journey, but hauling himself out of the narrow space of the cockpit while his lion was frozen in a dive was like climbing Mount Everest.

 

Once he made his way to the torso, he stretched both arms above his head, reaching for the emergency panel Hunk built into to all their lions. With one fist he relentlessly pounded on it until it began to budge, leaking slits of sunlight and dustings of sand into the robot. A hefty push and the heavy hatch started to open, the weight of sand above creating annoying resistance for Keith as he eventually got it fall open and stay open after letting a landslide of foreign sand invade the cabin.

He hoisted himself up above the scorching outer metal surface of his sentient machine, immediately his drowning senses where parched by the midday sun sending it’s excruciating heat beating down onto Keith’s heavily armored back like fists of lava.

 

Regardless of the harsh change in climate, the red paladin heaved his strength to push himself out of the opening, his vision blurring at the brightness. He wanted to stop, lay down for a lifesaving second and take a breath, try to catch his thoughts and focus himself. But this world felt no pity for it’s invader as the heat from the disturbingly close sun microwaved the metal pelt of Red so much it threatened to seep through the flight suit adorning his body, meant to withstand the vacuum of space.

 

He vaulted himself up onto his feet, stepping lightly to avoid burning himself further. The vantage point he gained from the top of his lion presented him with miles upon miles of empty desert. The universe traded one vast void for another, leaving Keith stranded. Only this time he didn’t have Red, power, or hope.

 

But Lance, his signal was on that screen. It was the last thing Keith saw, and now it was all he had. Lance was here somewhere, even if it was on the other side of the planet; Keith would find him. With that thought standing proud at the front of his mind, he re-entered his Lion and collected his helmet, giving his friend one last unreciprocated goodbye.

 

He pulled himself back out of the Lion, closing the hatch with a bit of hesitation. One last effort to push Red to respond through their bond proved fruitless, nothing but silence. Keith thought he was supposed to be used to being alone with the silence, but after thinking he found a family, a bit of stability and familiarity had come to his life and it all vanished in a few seconds.

 

So he left the Lion, going out on a limb, knowing he couldn’t stay huddled up in the slanted metal corpse for to long, clinging to that last bit of hope that Lance was somewhere near by.

 

Climbing down from the top proved to be less difficult that Keith thought. In perspective from the back of the lion, like the top of a mountain, the dunes seamed just about normal sized, but when Keith attempted to jump from the shoulder to the tip of a motionless wave he found that they towered like skyscrapers above whatever could be considered solid ground. He landed, then slipped, and a monsoon of sand came crashing down with him, creating a snowballing avalanche on their way down, falling for what seamed like an eternity.

 

Hitting the base of the one singular dune Keith was on his feet immediately scrambling, his suit was bleeding small blotches of sand, intruding on ever inch.

 

“I hate sand.” Keith hissed to himself, trying to shake it out. Huffing, he continued.

 

He geared to climb the next hill, taking a deep breath before practically throwing himself at it. Speed was not on his side just as sand had no regard for stability, his first few running steps got him about a foot, but quickly his energy escaped him and the sand started to flee from under his feet at an alarming rate. Soon he was down to grasping desperately at the fleeting surface, clawing and dragging himself up the remainder of the dune only to land at the undetermined top still teetering for solid ground.

 

Keith could see Red buried up to her waist in sand, her hind legs bent sideways at an unnatural angle. Beyond her to the east was the continuing void of frozen waves, dissipating into cracked ground that went on forever, the sight of it wavering in Keith’s vision while the heat from the impossibly close sun and that of whatever was emanating from the ground collided.

 

To the west where more pillars of sand, rolling onwards for miles upon miles. Keith starts to doubt there ever was any green on his map, it only seamed to be dead, crumbled salt forever.

 

Keith shut his eye against the blaring sun, taking a second to pause and allow the deadly radiation to seep through his black flight suit and pierce the already heavy paladin armor. Slowly he pealed his heavy outer armor off his chest and shoulders, letting is fall to the ground, some planting themselves by Keith’s feet, some pieces rolling down the sides.

 

Keith remembered Lance complaining endlessly about them, he remembered Shiro’s soft laugh at his pettiness, he remember ending the argument with Lance placing his clothes into a storage panel in his lion with a final huff.

 

Keith remembered seeing green fields when he closed his eyes at night, and he remembered hearing Lance talk about them in the day. Keith remembered that as he and his lion plummeted towards this devils playground, his eyes where glued to the viewing screen in terror, to his right was a blooming blur of deep green and orange.

 

His right, yes to his right. Keith whirled to face is lion once again, facing in the same direction she face planted into the sand. Holding out both his hands in an ‘L’ motion, his heart jumped.

 

“Right, that’s North!” He shouted, swiveling to face that same direction and peered into the hazy distance. Nothing.

 

 _I’m not high enough._ He thought urgently. So without a second thought to his situation, he jumped from the top of the dune and landed squarely on his back, sliding down the side of the hill like a human sled.

 

Once at the bottom he dove to start climbing the next one. Nothing could stand in Keith’s way, not a pile of sand, nor the unending expanse of space, and certainly not the growing pit in his stomach growling like a warning on a machine screaming over and over again: _feed me, feed me_.

 

Hunger is a silent, uncatchable murderer and it was creeping up in Keith’s peripheral vision, ready to make him its next victim. As the red paladin gave every inch of his remaining strength, which was dwindling already, to mounting his next pathetic pile of sand, and his next and his next, his saw his whole life flash in front of him. He found in that moment that he was not content with what he saw, and decided just then that Keith Kogane refused to go out tumbling around in some dust bowl like a fish on its first date with dry land.

 

His legs gave out and he went sliding down the few inches he had managed to surmount, all he could see when he tried to close his eye’s was the blinking of that light and all he could hear was the broken static on the other end of Lance’s line. Lance, he has to be here somewhere, he has to be.

 

Keith’s eyes started to water, either from the heat or his decimated hope he didn’t know, his heart and his gut where in turmoil. He laid gently back on the sand, closing his crusted eyes and willing his breath to slow as it burned his dry lungs and dusty mouth.

 

_“Ok, desert island.” Lance said, clapping his hands together. “Three books, three movies, one person and one food for the rest of your life. No fake-out, Hunk you go first.”_

_Hunk sighed like he was taking it 100 percent seriously, “Princess Bride, Mean Girls, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The entire Percy Jackson series, my dad, and sushi.”_

_“What are you a moody teenage girl?” Hunk shrugged, “ok, whatever, Pidge?”_

_“Django Unchained, Mad Max, Juno. Books: Things Fall Apart, the fourth installment of the Warriors series, and Sherlock Holmes. I’d take Matt, and spaghetti.”_

_“Not gonna say anything about that, Shiro?”_

_“Pass.”_

_“Ok, nothing from space dad. Keith?”_

_Keith glanced up at Lance from his position on the couch, desperate confusion painted on his pale face. Lance looked over expectantly._

_“Keith?”_

_Keith swallowed hard. He’d only been to the movies once in his entire life and that was to see a cartoon since his parents, or anyone else in his tiny little town had television. He’d read books for school, he didn’t have much of a palette and he didn’t have any friends. Pidge would have brought her brother; Hunk his father, no doubt Lance would have picked a member of his family. Keith had no one._

_“Come on, what’s your favorite movie.” Keith stared at Lance, dumbfounded, “book?” no response, “food?” nothing, thank god Lance chose not to press._

_“I never really watched movies as a kid,” Keith began, his voice beyond a whisper. He could feel Shiro’s pity glare digging into his back. “I only really red books for school and I just kind of, just, ate what ever was around.”_

_“Increíble.” Lance muttered._

_He then proceeded to stand up in the center of the room, clad in his stupid paladin specific pajamas, and started to reenact the entirety of The Princes Bride completely on his own. Half way through Hunk stood up and joined in, Pidge towards the end. Shiro giggled and clapped through the whole thing, even Keith was brought to laugh at certain points – mostly when Lance started to pretend Pidge was a rodent of unusual size and the girl, on all fours, leapt up and start to maime him._

_They did this every night they had, or where standing on call, for Keith’s viewing pleasure. They reenacted movie after movie Keith had never seen or heard of. Desert island stayed at the back of Keith’s mind for what felt like months, garbling nonsense about which movie was his favorite or what book they tried to convince him was the best. He found himself stuck on one question: whom would he want to spend the rest of his life with? He discovered that he could never be brought to chose, these people where his family now, however odd, and if he where to go back to being alone again, he thinks he would rather just be dead._

 

Keith could feel the tears cascading down his cheeks at this point. His ears couldn’t hear anything but the gentle movement of sand all around him, he feared if he opened his eyes they would melt out of his head. He really thought he was going to die in that moment, never telling Hunk how much he appreciated everything he did, never hugging Pidge and apologizing, never really lending Shiro the hand and the shoulder he needed to cry on, never Telling Lance just how much he liked him.

 

No, Keith would allow it. He threw himself over onto his stomach and began to crawl like the pathetic slab he had become. The sand shifted and bunched around him, and he didn’t even move an inch. The tears started to fall from his face and wet the sand for a split second before drying up again, in that moment there was nothing more he wanted than to plant his face in the sand and wait or himself to suffocate.

 

But, just then, perhaps one of those gods Keith had been praying to finally heard him, because Keith heard the sand toil behind him and a soft gasp escape lips that weren’t his own. With effort he turned himself over and came face to face with –

 

“Lance, is that you?” his voice cracked like a dead leaf getting crushed under foot, formed into a terrified whisper at the sight of the borderline stranger standing over him, face hardened from years of waiting.

 

“Who the hell is Lance?"


	2. The Underway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance looked down at Keith, pride in his voice as he spread his arms out above him, welcoming him to this new place full of greenery and flowers and the cleanest air with cliche things like flowers implanted in the ground and walls around them, butterflies gathering in gaggles above his dumbfounded head. 
> 
> "Welcome, to the Underway."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> long

 

 Keith wanted to say he recognized him immediately; that he sprung to his feet and they collided in greeting, laughing and chirping at each other. But Keith had to look hard into this figure to really collect the broken image of Lance in his minds eye and compare it to that of the real man in front of him. It was like looking at two different renditions of pieces of art with two slightly different art styles. This stranger was one scar away from being that childish Lance Keith knew, a couple of inches of hair away from being that same perfectionist he found himself missing so much.

 

For a shirt he wore what was once the flight suit under his armor, the sleeves cut off to the turtle neck type collar, so Lance’s tanned and muscled shoulders protruded. His Bayard rested confortable at his hip, and around his thighs and booted feet where cracked remnants of his one spotless paladin armor. That one tiny mirror of there life brought a certain chill of relief to Keith’s bunched chest.

 

“Lance, oh my god, it is you!” Keith said, pushing himself into a stand, gasping on his words he thought would be much more glorious, “it’s so good to finally see another Human.”

 

Keith dashed in for a hug, seeing the slight flinch on Lances part but choosing to ignore it. Colliding with Lance’s hot skin and feeling the roughness of his foreign clothes balling in his fists was like slipping into bed after a long day, and oh how Keith wished it would last forever. Lance’s skin would always retain that distant hint of earth and cologne, even now.

 

Keith pulled away to look into Lance’s confused eyes, taking in his scruffy stumble growing on his jaw, long bangs and chapped lips. He didn’t hug back.

 

“L-Lance. You – “ Keith stopped to take a long breath. They had to have been lost for less than a week, a day or two maybe. But Lance, he looked like he had been waiting for years.

 

“Listen, pal.” Responded the stranger, peeling Keith off his shoulders. “I don’t know who this Lance guy is and why you’re looking for him, but this desert is not a safe place for travelers.”

 

“What are you talking about?” scoffed the red paladin, feeling his insides start to spike with anxiety. “ _You’re_ Lance, you’re the blue paladin and I’m here to take you back! We – we have to find the others.”

 

Lance held out a finger to stop his babbling with a look of genuine if not confused concern. “Look, I don’t know how long you’ve been out here, but you need to get to shelter. When was the last time you had water?”

 

Lance tried to parade him to sit down, the bags and little contraptions he had wrapped around his waist jangled as he walked. Keith was having none of it and let Lance’s loose grip on his shoulder slip off. He circled around him, keeping his distance, aware of what the heat might be doing to his mind; Lance’s suspicious glare followed him alike.

 

A knife made of stone was tied to the belt at the base of his back and Keith felt a pang of sadness as he absently reached for his own, knowing it wasn’t anywhere near him. Lance turned on his heels; the look on his face was startlingly unfamiliar. It looked angry and annoyed, genuinely. Of course they had gone into battle before, but the expression on this Lance’s face was feral and Keith drew back.

 

Whatever would have proceeded that glance was not either of their destinies to know, since Lance, in a great show of grace, jumped for Keith and pulled both of them to the ground, pressing into the sand dune like he intended for them to sink into it. His broad chest pressed directly into Keith’s face, causing his vision to be obstructed and an unexpected blush to creep up his cheeks from his ears like some sort of schoolboy.

 

A shot had blasted just over there heads, sizzling through even this un-survivable landscape and planting itself in the sand just a few feet from where they had been standing. It scorched the ground and threw sand up in a small eruption, in it’s wake it had turned the already scalding surface into a black mark of red lava.

 

“We have to go.” Lance cursed, pulling himself off his former friend. Immediately, with his hand intertwined in Keith’s, he began to run elegantly over the unstable sand like he was walking over water.

 

Keith, on the other hand, yelled and stumbled across the open sand, with the incomprehensibly large Dunes falling into the background, the sand replacing them like a gentle wake, and still it went on to eternity. Heavy armor clattering around his knees and behind them glittering purple laser shots tracing their footsteps like malicious stalkers, missing by a dangerous couple of centimeters every time. Keith could feel fear nipping at his heals, riding on the sprays of sand sent up after every step and grasping at his shoulders, threatening to make him trip every time his feet touched the ground.

 

In front of him Lance barely wavered, his back rippling with his pace. He didn’t look back, nor did he shout, he just ran and ran and ran without taking any precautions to make sure his unexpected hitchhiker was still behind him. Other than their linked hands, that slicked and threatened to part with Lance tugging forward relentlessly.

 

“When I say jump, you jump!” came Lances sudden cry before him.

 

Keith brought his eye’s off Lance’s back, looking to the back of his fluffy head, then to the horizon line that seemed to be rushing towards them. The end of the world, the ledge into the sky was looming beyond them and Lance wanted him to jump.

 

“What? Are you out of your mind?”

 

Just then, Lance came to a skidding halt, whipping Keith behind him, drawing his old paladin shield from behind him and meeting a shot headed directly for his third eye. Several more projectiles planted themselves in the ground at their feet and some meeting the shield, all missing their marks. Lance made no attempts to lash back, standing sturdy in the face of the oncoming attacks and Keith got a real look at the enemy. Several completely armored Galran soldiers advanced at them from the dunes, running at full speed and struggling with the sand just as Keith did. They arrived from behind different towers of sand, all attempting to reconfigure and advance collectively forward. Lance had his hand around Keith’s waist, pushing him further back by a few steps.

 

Keith glanced behind him and saw the cliff face getting closer and closer, he could look over the edge and see the never-ending desert continue on below them. Bits of sand fell away from under Keith’s boot and fell as he was pushed further and further to death.

 

“If you want to get out of here in one piece, when I say jump you jump.” Lance called back.

 

“Like hell are you crazy?” Keith exclaimed, putting his weight against Lance.

 

“Jump!” Lance yelled, his shield disintegrated and he turned on his heals and kicked Keith in the chest and directly off the cliff.

 

Keith screamed as he felt the land slip away and he was flung through the air. Lance jumped after him, hands reaching for each other desperately. His hands caught a handle that dangled from an invisible wire. His body rocked as he began to slide down a cloaked zip line, one arm outstretched to catch Keith as he fell. A few shots flew over his head as he reached for his teammate. Just before Keith would have slammed directly into the side of the dune, Lance grabbed the back of his shirt. Keith huffed and groaned nervously as he hung like a cat being carried by the scruff of its neck.

 

The two slid a few inches before Lance let Keith go and he hit the side of a dune, coughing and gasping for air as his brain tried to catch up with his body. Lance met him smoothly at the bottom with a tiny _paff_ and began fiddling with the line, it retracted back into the tiny device planted in the sand like a grappling hook, Lance attached it to his belt and turned. Keith was drawn back up again and the two of them where on their feet in a second, running; Keith screaming, Lance ghostly silent.

 

They ran until the middle of the dune met the brown stone cliff they had just fallen from where a small tunnel sat at the base of it, ready to receive them. Lance motioned to it, the entrance was puny and dark, a random hole in a wall was threatening enough as it was.

 

Keith paused as he was trying to figure out what the hell was going on. He heard Shiro and Allura’s ever-present voices taunting at him from the back of his mind to trust his teammates no matter what, but was this really Lance? It looked like Lance, sounded like Lance, but he didn’t respond to his name and he didn’t seem to look at Keith with the same teenage glare as he normally did.

 

Lance rolled his eyes. He took his own leg and heaved it behind Keith’s knees, tripping him. As soon as the shorter paladins ass hit the sand he started to slide and was consumed by the dark hole.

 

Keith went from screaming to gasping, moaning, desperately trying to grasp where he was. The unbearable heat from the alien sun had left him, and was replaced with frigid darkness. Lance jumped in close behind him. The sand started to gradually get rough and depleted, the rock hard ceilings and walls showed small specks of light streaming past the unending darkness encompassing them.

 

They past the breaks in the walls like a car would pass streetlights in the dead of night. They flashed past in quick succession, getting closer together and smaller in size, shinning small moments of vision over Lance’s face, eyes squeezed shut.

 

Suddenly, the cavern stopped entirely and Keith was thrown into a gentle tumble onto soft ground. His bearings came to him slow; the world took a few deep breaths to stop spinning. A cool, earthly breeze met Keith’s scotched forehead, and his rough hands brushed over soft grass. His eyes adjusted to soft gentle sunlight like a summer beach. No blue sky greeted him, but some green leaves brushed around like clouds, splitting the light. Keith sat up, groggily, and his vision cleared to reveal himself sitting in the center of a small patch of thin grass, with white sand underneath. The mouth of the small tunnel sat behind him, the wall around it rose into the sky covered in moss and small flowers, around him different tropical trees and buzzing flies and insects. It was the polar opposite of the world he had just left.

 

Lance tumbled out behind him, landing square on his feet and brushing his legs off. A small pack slid in after him a few minuets later and flopped onto the ground. He leaned down and threw the sack over his shoulder. Solidly he tramped over to where Keith sat and kneeled down next to him, and all the previous tensions was gone from his body language, his eyes met Keith with much softer light.

 

Keith leaned over and took the opportunity to really take in his unfamiliar face. It was rigid and older, but it still retained that tell tale Lance-ness that everyone knew so well: the pointy chin, narrow cheeks, the soft eyes and thin noes. Curly, moss-like hair grew at the base of his chin and sharp jawline, small specs of the stuff invaded the soft space over his lips, his skin was dark and dusty, and his hair was a mess, the bangs now blended together as they grew too long for his face. His eye’s where sullen and dim. When they glared down at a broken Keith back in the dunes, they looked all too passive and lidded. They still glowed that eccentric blue like a brand to Lance’s name, but there was a film that invaded the once sharp, determined looks and replaced them with a dull echo of what once was.

 

“You ok?”

 

“Yeah.” Keith answered with a wavering dry ache in the depth of his voice, trying to tug himself into a stand he became dizzy and the world spun. “Are you?”

 

“Me? I wasn’t the one stuck in the desert, wandering aimlessly and completely unaware I was being hunted by two different people.” Lance mocked back, falling back into a relaxed lean. He let his head roll back as his eyes close as his body took in the cool sun and his breath became so slow he could have been sleeping.

 

“What do you mean hunted?” Keith insisted, not picking up on the serenity of the moment.

 

Lance sighed like an annoyed parent and brought his head back up to laze around his shoulders and look over at Keith with curiosity. “You didn’t really think you where going to enter an unknown planet with a display like that and not capture the attention of someone, did you?” Keith glared back. “I was out gathering energy and I saw you and your robot crash land. I followed you to make sure you weren’t one of the purple people.”

 

“You mean Galra? They’re here?” It dawned on Keith, and he shot up like a bolt immediately regretting it as his head projected dancing spots of painful light in his vision. “Red is up there without power or protection we have to go back!”

 

“Whoa, whoa there buddy.” Lance heaved, standing and grabbing Keith by the shoulder, steadying him. “No one can go back up there till tomorrow night. In a couple of hours the surface of this planet is going to get almost as hot as the sun. No one can survive that, not even these ‘Galra’ you speak of.”

 

“What do you mean? Where are we?”

 

“This.” Said Lance, with a bit of smugness lingering in his tone, like he was showing off. “Is the underway”

 

Keith looked up for the first time and saw little spots of sun filtering through holes in the ceiling of this enormous cave they were in. it must have been hundreds of feet below the surface, the rock jagged and thin, not at all like any cave he had seen before, it was big enough and aired enough to house this forest they to be stood on the edge of. Huge pillars reached up from the ground of the cave in various places and stretched up to the ceiling and beyond. From the little spots of sunlight invading from the land above, it lit the cave as if it where it’s own sky. A type of alien bird flew over them in flocks, small parades of sand cascaded down from the ceiling every so often and the whole placed seemed to just - breath.

 

It was beautiful.

 

“After the planets surface became inhabitable for the plant life and the regular population, all the trees died and turned to sand. The sand purified the soil at its base, and small pockets of rock like this eroded and became one gigantic cavern directly below the planets surface. The sand filters down from traps above and feeds into the soil that helps the plants to grow again. Gradually all life that once existed began to thrive again, down here.”

 

It was then that the exhaustion of his time in the desert caught up with Keith’s busy body and he was hit with nauseating waves of heat and sweat despite it being perfectly cool here. He wavered on his feet and Lance took notice, calling out to him with what was no doubt concern, but Keith’s ears tuned the world out and his eyes began to roll back into his head. He willing gave into sleep, welcoming it as a friend.

 

\--

 

When Keith came to, he was startled into awareness by possibly the most pleasurable splash of cold water he had ever experienced. The first thing that dawned on his was the light, flittering pure white light that greeted him from above and for a split second he thought maybe he was dead. The next sense to hit him was the smell; the air spinning around him carried the most pleasant and genuine smell he’d taken in in a long time. It was like summer rolled into the wind, fresh cut grass and honeysuckle and warm bark, the distant rustle of leaves and the feeling of cold, soft earth beneath his fingertips.

 

He sat up slowly, his hears picking up the sound of animals scurrying and the trickling of water on rocks. He turned to his left and saw Lance crouched over a tiny stream, the water clearer than glass, flowing seamlessly over his fingers and into a small leather pouch. Lance looked like he was in his element; he crouched on one knee, his unconcerned blue eyes scanning the grass around him and the water dripping from his forehead, flies buzzed around his head and he didn’t seem the least bit bothered, a family of some alien rodent scurried around him, gathering their own water – they didn’t seem to mind him either, and he stayed still enough for them to go about their business.

 

“Are you feeling better?”

 

Keith was startled back into awareness, the final tails of fog retreating from his mind. “Yeah, what happened?”

 

“You must have been dehydrated from being out in the desert too long.” Lance handed him the leather pouch and Keith drank greedily.

 

Lance watched over at Keith with questions streaming through his mind endlessly. He grabbed his wrist gently and coaxed the pouch away, capping it and attaching it to his enchanting tool belt.

 

“When I saw you and your lion fall through the sky I knew I had to find you.” Lance said, taking a step over to Keith’s side of the creek. “I thought maybe you got lost, maybe you knew what happened to me.”

 

“What?” Keith stumbled, regaining his bearings, taking Lance’s hand when he offered it. “What are you talking about?’

 

Lance squinted. “I’ve been here for about a year, I – well. It’s hard to explain.”

 

“Lance.” Keith paused, “Are you ok?”

 

Lance took a deep breath and looked past Keith, then glanced around them as he held it chin in thought. “Follow me.” And without another word he disappeared into the trees.

 

“Wait – wait. Lance!” Keith said and sprang up after him.

 

He pushed past a bushel of bushes holding him back like a crowd of tangled limbs grabbing at his clothes. The light dissipated into a soft shadow as he sank into the deep forest and lost track of Lance. He called his name a couple of times and was met by mocking laughter and Lance’s call back at him. He followed the annoying squeak of Lance’s voice and burst through the clearing, greeted by the most destructive crash site he’d ever seen.

 

It looked as if the blue lion had come down just as hard as Keith and red had, accept he must have burst through a sinkhole in the ceiling and crashed straight through the surface. The lion was buried under a mountain of dirt and sand up to her torso and down around to her haunches. Her head was titled sickly sideways, unnatural for any functioning machine, her mouth hung open as if her jaw had broken. On each side of her dead head her paws lay slightly detached from the rest of her body, open wires covered in dust and dirt and flowers, lay everywhere. A makeshift camp spread before her, a well worn fire-pit, a tent set against the mound formed at her belly, a wood-weaved lounge chair sat under the tent, cloth – most likely makeshift clothes – dried on a line between one of blue’s ear and the tent.

 

The way it looked blue crashed and slid took up hundred of feet in every direction, felled trees littered the way, stumps and rocks and bits of Blue’s armor strewn the open field. It was strange, to see moss and grass starting to repair the damaged done, ready to accept the inept piece of machinery as a natural part of the landscape.

 

Lance walked on towards his temporary home and welcomed Keith closer. Keith began to scale the distance cautiously, taking it all in alongside the lingering beauty still bewildering his mind. He got closer to blue, still an enormous display of power despite being out of commission. Butterflies fluttered around his head and it all seamed a little delirious.

 

“I know it’s not much but, it’s been home for the past year.” Lance whispered. He looked back at his guest with a deep-seated pain in the back of his eyes.

 

“Year?” Keith gasped, trying to hold back his irrational anger and anxiety churning his stomach. “You’ve been here for a year?”

 

_It was only supposed to be a couple weeks. What happened to you, Lance?_

 

“Your robot, it looks like this one.” Lance said, jittering excitement taking over his movement. “You know what this is? Where it came from?”

 

“Of course.” Keith said, looking down at Lance’s sudden grip of his shoulders with resentment. “Don’t you?”

 

Lance’s eye went distant and he released Keith, sauntering towards his lion and pressing one warm hand to the armors cold surface. “No. I – I can’t remember”

 

He clutched the sides of his head in frustration. “I remember – bits and pieces – faces, fuzzy and distant. Like I’m looking into a fogged mirror. Blaring alarms, screaming, pain.”

 

Lance gripped the sides of his head and collapsed to the ground in a heap, eyes shut tight and breath coming out in little puffs through clenched teeth. Keith rushed down, kneeling by his friend and putting a gloved hand on his back. The blue paladin visibly relaxed under the simple touch, his eyes cracked open and he leaned back and crossed his legs. Soul deep sadness crept into the corners of his eyes in the form of specks of tears. Lance was a crier; Keith remembered that about him, seeing the soft shadow of his former friend before him made his heart lurch with hope.

 

“I felt this - tug – to go to you when I saw you streak through the sky. It's this...pull, this energy I can’t explain. I didn’t understand it, all I knew was that I had to get to you before purple robots did.”

 

Keith smirked to himself, “I understand. It’s our bond, we’re paladins of Voltron.”

 

Lance looked down to the illustrated ‘v’ on Keith’s shoulder padd and he reached out to trace it with his finger. “I remember falling. I woke up here, bleeding. I kept blacking out. It all comes back to me in little snapshots, fragmented and incomplete. I’ve gone out into the desert every night for the past year, thinking that someone would come for me.” Tears started to fall now, and his pupils dilated. “Someone out there must care about me, right?”

 

“Of course someone cares about you, Lance.” Keith whispered, putting his hand on his friend’s chest with something else akin to pity constricting his own. He never really thought about Lance in depth. Everyone took him as that goofball, flirt, cocky guy who was no deeper than simple adjectives – so Keith perceived him this way too, he was far too busy with his own angst to notice Lance ever emoting anything past jealousy. He realizes a bit too late he’s made a mistake.

 

He’s about to say something more, maybe spill the beans to an innocent Lance his buried feelings and lost emotions when the light from the pot holes of sand above them started to dim. It turned a fading yellow, orange, and a strange glowing blue and within half a minute everything around them went beyond pitch black. It was so dark Keith couldn’t even see his own hands or feet, nor a quickly panicking Lance shaking like a leaf beside him. It was so dark Keith forgot for a split second that he or anything else physically existed.

 

Lance must have moved, so silently and softly Keith didn’t notice him get up and leave his side because a soft crack preluded to a spark and a fire forming in the pit he noticed early, Lance standing over it as it grew and grew and ate away at the charred wood hungrily, soon it was at a healthy blaze. Keith scooted closer to it and looked nervously over at Lance beneath hooded eyelids. Silence settles between them, filled by pops of sparks in the vacant air.

 

“Do you really not remember anything? Not Voltron, not your name, earth, nothing?” Keith urged after a moment too long suffering in ignorance.

 

Lance shook his head, sighing deeply, lost in the warm blaze. A moment later his voice piped up. “Am I Lance?”

 

“Yeah, you’re Lance. Lance McClain, from earth. You pilot the blue lion.”

 

Lance poked at the fire and scoffed. “Lance, what an odd name.” he said to himself then shifting his gaze to the gigantic hunk of metal lying around them. “That’s the blue lion?”

 

“Yes. It’s a piece of Voltron; we defend the universe from Zarkon. Those men we saw in the desert? They’re Zarkon’s.”

 

“Voltron.” Lance echoed, stars twinkling in his eyes, “defender of the universe, huh? Has a nice ring to it.”

 

Sorrow erupted momentarily in Keith’s chest, hearing the ghost of Shiro’s words leaving Lance’s unsuspecting lips. He wondered absently if he and the other paladins where safe, if they knew who they where, if team Voltron would ever be together again. Sadness tugged at his throat.

 

“Tell me more.”

 

\--

 

It seemed like hours had passed, with Keith now standing in dramatic descriptions to a giggling Lance the portrayal of some dramatized version of one of their battles. Something bloomed in his chest seeing Lance’s face crack in glee because of him. He smiled back, haughtily, soaking in all his glory.

 

“That sounds so brilliant.” Lance said, stifling a yawn.

 

“It was.” Keith responded, the joy fading from his face as he sunk back onto the ground and kept his eyes locked on the steady flames flickering between him and Lance. Melancholy replaced the happy moment, his mind once again wandered down that destructive path of curiosity, whether or not anything would ever be the same again. He tried illustrating the road so far to lance in jokes it would awake some of his memories. Joy had ensued, sure – but no resting rock was overturned in Lance’s foggy head and he remained in the dark.

 

“Hey Keith.” Lance whispered cautiously. “If you know me so well, can you explain something to me?”

 

Keith hummed, and Lance stood from his spot and began to remove his shirt. Red curls of embarrassment once again entangled their way across Keith’s cheeks and he was tempted to look away. Lance never let them see him without a shirt on and he was admit about it. No one pushed it, simply out of respect, and now something told him that this Lance definitely did not remember whatever secret regular Lance wanted to keep from them then. He walked over to Keith, now shirtless, and displayed to him two identical scars running chest under his pecks. Keith’s gut constricted.

 

Two surgical scars ran under his chest. Keith may be a desert dwelling hermit but he wasn’t inept and he knew what those scars meant.

 

“N-no, Lance I don’t know what those are.” Keith lied urgently, averting his eyes. “Please put your shirt back on.”

 

Lance shrugged like it was no big deal and followed instructions, squeezing his already disturbingly revealing muscle-shirt over his head and flopped down next to Keith with a huff.

 

“I’m glad you found me, Keith. It’s good to know I matter to someone.”

 

“Y-yeah lance, I’m glad I found you too.” Keith said behind a mask covering up immense guilt and fear.

 

Lance lay down beside him and left Keith to stare into the dying flame with existential crisis after existential crisis throughout most of the night.

 

\--

 

When Keith awoke the next morning, the light that infiltrated them was harsh as a midday summer blaze, and was not at all considerate to Keith or his eyesight. At some point he had gotten used to just adjusting immediately to all and any situation he found himself in, call it a survival tactic, but waking up to Lance two centimeters away from being curled up under his chin was nothing anyone nor anything could have ever prepare himself for. He jumped back with a gasp and Lance’s eye shot open as well. He threw himself in the opposite direction of Keith and gasped for air as he watched Keith with a guarded expression, grasping at something behind his back – his dagger no doubt. Keith felt a little hurt at the motion but he understood. If Keith thought he was disoriented by the whole situation, he couldn’t even begin to imagine how Lance felt.

 

Neither would have a second to spare to recover from the awkward moment as a distant and almost unnoticeable beeping whistled in the background. Keith heard it first, holding a hand to his ear to motion for Lance to listen too. Both eyes where drawn to the powerless blue lion and her gaping maw.

 

“Is that a distress beacon?” Keith asked, knowing the beeping noise by heart at this point, Lance shrugged his shoulders rather violently and Keith rolled his eyes in return.

 

Both rose from the spots on the hard ground and ventured into the lions open mouth, up through her jaw and towards the cockpit. It was obvious that Lance usually slept inside at nights, it was a mess of broken paladin armor and his normal citizen clothes strewn over the cot at the back of the head. Keith took it in as Lance moved past it to the cockpit. The chair was slightly dangling off its hinges and they both had to squeeze past it to get to the dash. When Keith laid eyes on it his breath caught in his throat; dried blood caked the sides of the dash, flakes of the red liquid where slick on the walls. He took it in with increasing dread, watching Lance ignore it and go straight to the inactive dash.

 

“Holy quiznack, Lance.” Keith hissed, “What the hell happened?”

“Doesn’t matter now,” replied Lance with passive embarrassment. “Look at this. It’s never done this before.”

 

Keith approached the dash, his mind desperately trying to push the blood aside and focus on the singular hologram greeting him. It flickered on low power and electricity bounced around it, but regardless what it represented was clear. It was displaying a distress beacon, a little red blimp on the screen reaching out to them.

 

“It’s red. She’s active.” Keith said, tapping the little red dot with excitement, watching it expand, quadrants popped up next to it, Altean speeding past their eyes in rapid lines. For the millionth time, holding nothing back, a stone dropped in Keith’s gut. His eyes widened and he looked over at a confused Lance in panic.

 

“She’s been taken by the Galra.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh...did this turn into a naausica au?
> 
>  
> 
> n(yes)o

**Author's Note:**

> eh


End file.
